It would be nice to say that I often hung out at Smalls, the underground jazz club off Sheridan Square. The tiny room was one of the more happening jazz joints of the ’90s, but I always found it kind of forbidding. For one thing, the place had next to no ventilation, and back in those dim dark days before Mayor Bloomberg banned cigarettes indoors, the smoke was inescapable. In fact, 10 years later, there’s still some leftover Smalls smoke in my clothes, and even in my hair (and I’m bald as a bowling ball). Further, back in the day, the music never seemed to get started until 10 or 11 p.m. or even later, with the real action getting under way long after midnight. It was great for musicians, who would often show up in the wee, small hours after their gigs at other clubs were finished, but not very welcoming for anyone who had to be in an office at 9 a.m. or filing a story on a morning deadline.

Around the corner on Seventh Avenue, the Village Vanguard has long set the standard for basement clubs in New York; Smalls, thereby, served as the subcellar. If an emerging player made good at Smalls, they would hope to be invited to play at the more mainstream Vanguard: The jazz world must be the only field of endeavor where moving up the ladder of success merely means that you get to do your thing in a slightly better class of basement. The original Smalls closed early in this decade; however, it reopened more recently in a more hospitable fashion, this time with a record label attached.

Ten years ago, I was particularly impressed with the way Smalls attracted so many adventurous and ambitious 20-something composer-arrangers, such as Guillermo Klein, Chris Byars, Jason Lindner, and Omer Avital. Today, they have all garnered reputations that have outgrown the club itself, even though they are all still a long way from being classified as elder statesmen.

Currently, both Messrs. Lindner (whose big band is now 12 years old) and Avital (who last year released the very satisfying “Room To Grow” on the Smalls label) have new releases that are closely intertwined. Mr. Avital plays bass on Mr. Lindner’s “Live at the Jazz Gallery” (Anzic), and Mr. Lindner plays piano on Mr. Avital’s “Arrival” (Fresh Sound World Jazz). The trumpeter Avishai Cohen appears on both releases, and further, Mr. Avital’s composition “Song for Amos” is heard on both as well; additionally Mr. Lindner also contributed a tune, “Middle Eastern Sunset,” to Mr. Avital’s project.

Yet though the two projects have all these factors in common, the different performances of “Song for Amos” illustrate the strong individuality of Mr. Avital, who comes from Givataim, Israel, and Mr. Lindner, who grew up in Brooklyn. (That is, apart from the obvious visual indications: Mr. Avital has a beard and a lot of hair, whereas Mr. Lindner, with his most shiny head, appears to frequent the same barbershop as myself.) Both versions begin with a somewhat left-field intro and then have the melody stated by the horns with a soprano saxophone lead. But even within those guideposts, the two songs for Amos could hardly be more different.

Mr. Avital’s sextet rendition of his own song contains unmistakable indications that this maestro was not exactly born in Brooklyn: He begins with the rattling of an oud, recorded as if to sound somewhere off in the distance, like at the start of a movie. This is followed by what sounds like a Mohammedan chant from all six members of the sextet, which leads into Mr. Avital laying down a basic vamp on his bass. On soprano, Joel Frahm leads the horns in playing their own melody in response to the bass vamp — it’s hard to say which of the two lines you hear is the main tune, and which is the countermelody. The main solo is given to Israeli trombonist Avi Lebovich, who soars over the rhythm section like a helicopter over the desert. Mr. Frahm leads the other horns back to the ending ensemble, and Messrs. Lindner and Avital gradually vamp it out.

As played by Mr Lindner’s big band, “Song For Amos” begins with the leader’s own piano, but emphasizing the low notes so that at first you think you’re hearing the string bass. He dwells on it for a full, three-minute solo, as if bent on proving that the piano can be just as dark and menacing as the bass, and further coaxing all manner of decidedly non-Western sounds out of the keyboard. The theme is again played on soprano, this time by Jay Collins, who gives it an even more exotic sound, which is contrasted by the driving brass behind him. Mr. Avital takes a full solo here, considerably longer than he did on his own album, stretching out on his own changes while Mr. Lindner accompanies him with both chords and melody. The composer is followed by the two Cohens, Avishai on trumpet, and Anat on tenor and clarinet. Mr. Cohen gets very high up on the horn playing ever more frantically, while the massed horns get darker and deeper in the background; Ms. Cohen starts in the lower register of the clarinet and plays with more reserve. Traveling through a fast passage that could have come from gypsy music, she gradually brings it back up to a musical and emotional high point so that Mr. Collins can return with the head. The horns reprise the main theme in a manner that sounds like the most aggressive mantra ever chanted; Mr. Lindner ends it with an electrified keyboard simulating an Indian harmonium.

Mr. Lindner uses a similar sound to introduce the double-CD set’s longest track, “The 5 Elements and the Natural Trinity,” which starts in foreign territory but quickly progresses to a downand-dirty trombone battle between Dana Leong and Joe Fiedler. In fact, most of the pieces begin with one of the leader’s two keyboards, from the bright and optimistic “Freak of Nature” to the romantic “Life Light,” in which the combination of the leader’s piano moving slowly over the horns suggests traditional big band jazz à la Ellington and Basie, but Mr. Avital’s Arco acoustic bass solo moves the action into outer space.

Which makes it interesting that the most far-out sounding piece on Mr. Avital’s album is Mr. Lindner’s “Middle Eastern Sunset,” a brief turn in which Mr. Avital’s oud engages in a duet with Mr. Lindner’s piano, leading directly in the album’s closer, “Lilian in the Big Blue,” which contrasts the oud and Mr. Frahm’s soprano. By voicing the instruments carefully, Mr. Avital makes his six pieces sound like a whole orchestra, and enhances the feeling by throwing in a layer of wordless chanting by the six men, and achieves a similar effect by having Mr. Lindner play electronic keyboards in the title song, “Arrival.”

Both of these instrumentalist-composer-arranger-bandleaders are doing superlative work. I look forward to hearing them again in person, no matter what the hour and especially without the cloud of cigarette smoke around them.